Page 82 of The Refusal

“Samsung?” James says, his delighted grin giving it all away.

“This is huge.” I bury my head in my hands.

“That sounded extremely thorough,” Des says.

“Yeah,” I mumble into my palms, dragging my hands down my face and looking at them over the screens.

With his hands over his head, Des starts making celebratory circles, and I can’t stop the smile that breaks free.

“How big?” James says.

“With what they’re talking about, I think we’re going to need loads of people. Probably. Shit, I don’t even know.” The laughter bubbles up my throat. Tipping back in my chair, I focus on the ceiling as I mull it over, but my mind is already shaping the contract, what we’re going to do. I straighten and meet Des’s wide eyes before pointing at them both.

“You two are going to be helping me run all this.” I’m asking a lot: They’re young; it will be a mountain of stress.

“Oh, I’m so up for this!” Des says. “Can I have a pay raise? Can I be interviewed alongside Janus Phillips? Perhaps with my shoulder touching his?” Des makes a dramatic sweeping motion down his right arm.

James is laughing as I grin at Des. “You can be photographed hugging him for all I care after I’ve kicked his ass.” But I don’t have anything to kick him about. This is … I don’t even know what this is. Unbelievably generous? And I hardly dare whisper it to myself …unbelievably romantic?

“I’ll be Head of Operations, and James can be Head of Technology.”

I’m laughing right now, but they’re both nodding at me as if they’ve already agreed on this. I stare at the pair of them. If I could jump over the desk and hug them, I would.

“You guys okay with that?”

Des gets up from his chair and does a little dance around our desks. I want to dance, too. One of the coders glances up. The desks have filled up now, and everybody has been pretending not to listen in. I have to explain the article and the call. I stand up and clap my hands.

“I’ve got some exciting news,” I say, and everyone turns to look at me.

45

Janus

The plunk-plunk of rain dripping off the guttering and gurgling down into the street below is the only noise that cuts through the quiet of Fabian’s apartment. I shiver in my hoodie. Saturdays like this used to be a complete rarity for me, but after my first few days of rampaging around the company like a wounded lion, I’ve been in the office once this week, drunk off my ass. I think Maddie got me out of the office and home, but it’s a blur.

Fab arrived at my apartment today with a deep scowl and bundled me into a cab, grumbling that I might have thought to call him and that he’d been worrying about me all week. He dragged my complaining backside back to Brooklyn and into a shower and then a chair and gave me some hideous recursive coding problem to solve. I’ve been grimly trying solution after solution for hours. I want to curl up on Fabian’s bed and sleep for a century.

Not a peep from Jo, despite it being six days since the article came out. I close my eyes, fighting the rising tide of nausea. When was the last time I took a risk and it didn’t pan out? I growl at myself. That’s what risk-taking is, asshole; it doesn’t work sometimes. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve blown it; she wanted no comment, for fuck’s sake. What was I thinking? How much was hope driving me forward? I’m a fool. I need to do something, anything, but my head is as empty as the tequila bottles in my kitchen. She’s not going to respond to a text, is she? I snort.A text?So fucking lame.

“Have you heard from Jo?” Fabian says.

What is he, a mind reader? I shake my head like a dog with a bee in its ear.

“You’re making all sorts of weird grinding teeth noises over there.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“She’s in Korea,” he says, and my whole body locks as I swing my chair round to gape at him.

“What?” I growl. “How do you evenknowthat?”

He grins at me. “I’m following her.”

“What thehell, Fab! You can’t shadow her around like some creepy stalker …”

He flaps a hand at me. “I developed a tracking system some time ago. There were some questionable people I came into contact with and I wanted to”—he waves his hand again—“monitor them. It aggregates data from phones and social media …”

I gawp at him, but he just shrugs.

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